This past weekend I was in communication with a high level (ok, elite) athlete engaged in a pretty beastly fitness competition somewhere in these United States. The conversation eventually led to the evolution of events in the sport of fitness and how they’ve become more physically demanding of the athletes. And not in a good way. As the conversation continued, we were in agreement programming wasn’t the only area which needed improvement at many of these events. Things like venue choice, safety measures, equipment, workout timing and workout order also need improvement. We talked about a lot of things. We talked about how some of these things might, again might, contribute to athlete injury if not addressed. I’ve written about some of these things in the past and I mentioned I would probably update that piece with some of the subjects we talked about.
Our conversation proved prophetic. Not an hour later I was sent a video of Kevin Ogar’s unfortunate accident. Now before I move on let me make this clear. I am in no way saying nor could I have any way of knowing what the exact cause of Kevin’s accident was. My best guess is even in “perfect” conditions this could have happened to anyone. I’ve seen the video, frame by frame, and I still can’t tell exactly when the injury occurred. The above mentioned conversation regarding the concerns of the safety and direction of events in the sport of fitness had nothing to do with Kevin. The timing was pure coincidence. This has been on my mind for some time. Like I said, I wrote about it all the way back in 2012.
Now we can’t shy away from examining what happened to Kevin. Although the severity of his accident is 1 in 100 million, the fact that he was injured may not be. The severity of Kevin’s accident doesn’t take away from the fact we should also be concerned with someone who may have twisted an ankle, or ripped their hands or blown out a knee. The fact remains we should examine how we can make our sport safer and better at measuring our definition of fitness. That post I plan to write will hopefully contribute to this effort.
However, THIS post is about something else. I feel compelled to address what was inevitable in the aftermath of Kevin’s incident. Something that has been brewing for years. It is the continual and emphatic onslaught of obnoxiously loud and unfairly biased voices screaming that the sport of fitness is dangerous. Kevin’s misfortune has simply supplied fodder for the cattle. Many of those screams come from people who are not exactly CrossFit coaches or athletes, but are happy to earn their money in CrossFit gyms and from die-hard CrossFit participants. In fact, many of these folks have an obvious and deep disdain for the sport of fitness and those who think it legitimate. Irony abounds.
While I think particular events can be made safer, the sport itself (and the CrossFit methodology) is as safe as any sport can be. However, there has been no shortage of folks willing to shout the contrary after Kevin’s misfortune. One such person is RC. According to RC, she is an accomplished weightlifter and an “expert” on all things weightlifting. She is very pleased with herself and obviously attaches much of her self esteem to her weightlifting accomplishments. She also seems to link the ability to lift heavy weights to high IQ. A somewhat precarious conclusion in my book. But I digress. Taking an alternative point of view to hers just means you’re a moron. At least in her mind.
It isn’t necessary to reveal her real name. Although as you are about to read, I don’t agree with RC’s views, it isn’t about disagreeing with an individual. It’s not personal. It is about disagreeing with an idea. The idea the sport of fitness is innately dangerous. RC is representative of many other folks who feel just as she does. So I’m using RC as representative of a viewpoint many share. And she has been kind enough to provide her feelings on her Facebook page which I have also posted here (in italics). Let me apologize for the length of this post but it was warranted.
My official, personal stance on CrossFit’s usage of the Olympic lifts in the hopes that more trained professionals follow suit and speak out on changes that can be made to decrease athlete injury risk:
RC starts off fine. Why wouldn’t we all try to make our respective sports more safe. Unfortunately RC’s position, particularly in her comments, devolves into philosophical and dare I say meathead rhetoric. While she presents her position as wanting to help make the sport safer, she later reveals (again, particularly in her comments) that she really just hates the sport of fitness. In fact she said as much. She wishes the sport of fitness would cease being a sport and in particular cease in using the Olympic lifts. (Stay tuned, I want to address this at the end of this post.)
I currently work at a CrossFit gym in Denver that has not had a single personal injury, and I believe this is because of the gym owners’ emphasis on impeccable technique, sound programming, personal limitations, and the principle that no single rep, set, or PR is worth getting hurt and having to sit out and rehab for several weeks or more.
This seems to be a reasonable statement on its face. Attention to “technique, sound programming, [and] personal limitations” should lead to fewer injuries. The problem is this reasoning is completely baseless. The fact that a gym, any gym, has had no reported injuries can mean one of a few things. It could mean this gym has no or very few members. The sample size is too small. It could mean the gym is so new, injuries haven’t occurred yet. The time frame is too short. It could mean that injuries have occurred, they just haven’t been reported. The reporting system is flawed. It is an error to assume because injuries have not been reported, they have either not occurred or will not occur.
What we know about risk is it can not be eliminated. It can only be reduced. Here’s the rub. In many cases, in fact in most, we are only guessing at the best methods of risk reduction. Because a constellation of factors in all likelihood affect one outcome, we can not say for certain which of those factors is the most significant. Thus we don’t know which factor to change (or not) to reduce risk. Contrary to what may seem reasonable in the strength and conditioning world attention to “technique, sound programming, [and] personal limitations” does not and can not eliminate all risk of injury. In fact, there is little support any one of those factors alone greatly reduces injury at all. Since technique, sound programming, [and] personal limitations are at best vague concepts, we can not in any way determine the exact magnitude of their effect on prevention of personal injury. My experience tells me folks executing so-called perfect technique get injured at similar rates of folks executing so-called horrible technique. Obviously many other things are at play.
In the finance world there is a concept referred to as systematic risk. Simply put, it is the risk of loss by simply participating in the market that all participants share and that risk can not be eliminated system-wide. Someone will lose, guaranteed. That said, it has been found that individual risk of loss can be reduced, though not eliminated, most commonly by diversification of assets. (There are better methods but that’s another blog.) Because we don’t know exactly which assets will save us from loss or which will ensure loss, we own a diversified list of assets we think are pretty good just to be “safe”. And even this measure only holds off the inevitable for a while. All participants in the market will experience some loss at some point (you’ll have a stock that tanks) even if that loss isn’t catastrophic (you lose all the money in your portfolio).
This concept exists in the physical world as well. The risk of loss by way of injury (or even death), is ever-present by simply existing and participating in life. This is also true of sport. Someone, we don’t know who with any certainty, is going to get hurt. However, individuals, teams and whole sports try to take precautions to mitigate the risk of injury. Because, like in investing, we do not know which cautionary tactic will work, we take many. Wraps, warm-up methods, nutrition, drugs, training partners, magic bracelets, turning our socks inside out. Whatever is available we’ll use it. But the fact remains no matter the precaution, injury will still occur. And if the individual stays playing long enough, he’ll be the one injured.
Research conducted over several generations and across many continents has produced a massive body of evidence to support certain parameters for safe and effective tests of physical fitness.
What research is that again? Here we get into a problem, which seems to be recurring with folks sharing RC’s views, of presenting a concept, an idea as if it were something definitively tangible. What is fitness? I challenge anyone to define it exactly. Actually, before you even start let me save you the trouble. It is not definable. At least not to a point where there is universal agreement. So if we can not define the thing we are testing, how can there be a massive body of evidence in how to test it? Answer: there can’t be.
Greg Glasman recognized this dilemma and endeavored to come up with a reasonable definition of fitness and then move to test it. This was definition was distilled into 10 domains. Two things have resulted from this effort. The CrossFit Games were born, the sport of fitness has grown, and events have been created to test fitness as defined by these 10 domains. The other thing that happened was the rest of the sports and conditioning world still can’t agree if the CrossFit definition of fitness (or any for that matter), is in fact the definition of fitness. So while Glasman was able to come up with a definition of fitness, the lack of universal support of that definition indicates he has likely failed in coming up with the definition of fitness. (Although I will comfortably say he has come up with the best.)
And that’s fine. Folks involved in the sport of fitness realize they are testing one particular definition of fitness. Whether or not someone outside the sport agrees with it is irrelevant. But what this shows is, as I have already said, no “massive body of evidence” can exist let alone set parameters for tests, on a thing that is more an idea or concept than anything else.
If CrossFit has an interest in athlete safety, then competitions MUST be modified to include methods of reducing the so-called “slop” factor in skilled movements; kipping motions; and high-rep, pre-fatigued, and touch-and-go Olympic and powerlifts.
This is a bold statement and one I’ve heard over and over – kipping movements and high rep lifts are “dangerous”. I assume (I have to assume because it’s never really explicitly stated by folks sharing RC’s view) that danger equates to the likelihood of suffering an injury. Even so, danger is relative. Dangerous as opposed to what? Checkers? Maybe. Driving? Not even close. Without some context saying something is dangerous is meaningless. Again, like I said earlier, living in the world carries with it a risk of injury. More dangerous than standing too close to the edge of the subway platform?
RC suggests CrossFit and the sport of fitness are more dangerous, that is more injurious, than Olympic weightlifting or powerlifting. There is also the veiled implication weightlifting and powerlifting are in some way “safe”. Actually, I won’t argue that point. However, other than pure conjecture or a primal disgust for anything “new” or “unusual” or “popular”, there is no basis of support in painting the sport of fitness as dangerous. Never, and I mean never, will you hear someone make this statement and support it with any hard evidence. The reason is because there is no evidence.
The evidence which does exist shows however, the sport of fitness is (as I stated in my response to RC), as safe if not safer than weightlifting, powerlifting and most common sports. Calhoon, et al (1999) conducted a survey of in residence USOTC athletes and found “rates of acute and recurring injuries were calculated to be 3.3 injuries per 1000 hours of weightlifting exposure”. Powerlifters seem to be injured at a bit higher rate. Keogh, et al (2006) conducted a survey of Australian powerlifters and found a rate of injury at 4.4 to 4.8 per 1,000 hours of training. In comparison to other sports like football, soccer, baseball, hockey and basketball (even tennis), these numbers are favorable. How do these rates compare to those in the sport of fitness? In a survey conducted by Hak, et al (2013) the researchers found:
“An injury rate of 3.1 per 1000 hours trained was calculated [for CrossFit]. No incidences of rhabdomyolysis were reported. Injury rates with CrossFit training are similar to that reported in the literature for sports such as Olympic weight-lifting, power-lifting and gymnastics and lower than competitive contact sports such as rugby union and rugby league.”
So much for RC’s theory CrossFit is dangerous. These figures don’t surprise me. The injury rate at our gym is actually much lower than what’s reported in Hak’s survey. We implement a lot of the precautions against injury for our members RC reports her gym uses as well. Difference is we know the possibility of injury still exists no matter what we do. And we implement redundant precautions because we are not arrogant (or foolish) enough to assume we know which precaution will be the one to keep our members injury free. I’m confident most CrossFit gyms attempt to do the same thing. (Of course, that is conjecture on my part.)
RC is pretty typical of most people who fear the new, the improved, the different. It’s human nature to oppose things you do not understand and in attempt to conceal this personal bias, invent unsubstantiated “evidence” for possessing said opposition. Usually that so-called evidence comes in the form of “because I said so”. That may work with 5-year olds but no so much with the rest of us.
Even athletes who do have sound technique on a daily basis in the gym are currently being placed in competitive situations and environments where they are simply too fatigued or do not have the necessary space to implement that technique. And as long as this remains the case, then I am fearful that serious injuries such as the one seen last weekend will become only more prevalent within the competitive CrossFit community.
According to RC, because Kevin Ogar suffered a catastrophic injury, the conditions in which he was performing must have been compromised. RC also suggests the sport itself is dangerous to the point where this type of injury will continue to happen. Oh boy, where do we start with this? First off RC draws a direct line between CrossFit and catastrophic injury. We have already seen CrossFit is at the very least, no more dangerous than both weightlifting and powerlifting. With that, RC has lost me. If these were the perfect conditions for an injury – fatigued athletes, limited space, and “heavy weights” with high reps – then why didn’t everyone who participated suffer similarly unfortunate injuries. In fact, since the conditions in this particular event have been present in many other events over the years, how come no injuries as severe have occurred.
RC has, as is common, made a fallacious argument. She has confused causation with correlation. Just because two or more things happen simultaneously does not mean there exists a cause and effect relationship. The fact that there has been an absence of injuries on the magnitude of Ogar’s at similar events and to other athletes should indicate this particular injury was a fluke. But RC takes the other route. RC’s logic – man was hurt performing activity means activity is dangerous and will lead to more injury – has the appearance of being a reasonable position. But many fallacious arguments seem to be reasonable. What most of these arguments have in common are they are heavy in rhetoric and plays on the preconceived notions (and emotions) of the audience. RC’s post and subsequent comments were steeped in rhetoric. RC is guilty of faulty logic but figures if she says it loud enough, often enough and obnoxiously enough, it will be true.
Let me close with this. I am concerned with improving the safety of the sport of fitness. But baseless rhetoric of the false dangers of the sport does not serve this end. (Especially when there are real issues like the ones I discussed with my friend.) For those who are are not participants in or coaches of the sport of fitness, it will do us all a service if instead of denigrating the sport, you strive to understand it. Particularly those from the weightlifting world. Too often, as RC does, weightlifters want CrossFit and the sport of fitness to be, well, weightlifting. Somehow it is lost on them that what we as athletes and coaches learn in the weightlifting world is only partially transferable to our sport. Simply because we call it a snatch or a clean, doesn’t absolutely make it the same. Approaching 30 reps of a submaximal snatch for time in the same manner and technique you would a one rep max snatch is simply ineffective.
Our sports are different. Football involves running. So does soccer. Doesn’t make them the same sport. Although the sport of fitness and weightlifting both involve moving a barbell through space, doesn’t make them the same sport. Please before you continue to rail on the sh*tty technique displayed by a CrossFit athlete, check yourself. You may not understand the sport to the degree you think. The best weightlifting coaches are humble enough to realize this, no matter what they’re accomplishments are, and are flourishing in the CrossFit world. Be one of them.
Saturday 140118
***DELOAD WEEK***
Conditioning
run: 5K @ 50-65% of RPE